Survivor

The
following script is from "Survivor" which aired on Dec. 8, 2013.
Anderson Cooper is the correspondent. Tom Anderson and Michelle St. John, producers.

One
of the most extraordinary stories of bravery to emerge from the war in
Afghanistan began when a four-man Navy SEAL team found themselves badly
outnumbered in a long and vicious firefight.

Only
one of the SEALs survived. His name is Marcus Luttrell, and tonight you'll hear
his account of a mission that went horribly wrong after he says his unit was
surprised by -- of all things -- some goat herders and their goats.

Marcus
Luttrell's three SEAL team mates weren't the only American casualties in the
battle. A chopper with 16 other Special Operations forces that had rushed to
help Luttrell and his team was shot out of the sky. Everyone on board was
killed.

At
the time, in June 2005, it was the largest loss of life in one day for Naval
Special Warfare since World War II. A former commander of Marcus Luttrell's,
retired Vice Admiral Joe Maguire, told us no SEAL will ever forget that
terrible day.

Anderson
Cooper: Was that the toughest day for you as a Special Forces commander?

Joe
Maguire: Yes. You know, most people of my generation, they ask the question,
you know, do you remember when Kennedy was shot? Well I remember that as well,
but a much more moving day for me and one that's more defining is the 28th of
June, 2005, when that helicopter was shot down and three of my men were killed
on the ground.

Nineteen
men lost their lives. Vice Admiral Joe Maguire was head of SEAL training at the
time.

Joe
Maguire: You would have to go back to World War II to have had one day where we
experienced that many casualties at one time.

"You know, most people of my generation, they ask the question....do you remember when Kennedy was shot? Well I remember that as well,
but a much more moving day for me and one that's more defining is the 28th of
June, 2005, when that helicopter was shot down and three of my men were killed
on the ground."

Maguire
says the entire SEAL community was devastated. It’s a community Marcus Luttrell
and his twin brother decided they wanted to be part of when they were still
teenagers.

Marcus
Luttrell: He had it in his head that he was-- this is what we were gonna do. He
was like, "It's gonna be great, man. We get to jump outta airplanes, we
can shoot guns and blow stuff up. We get to scuba dive. And there's an 80
percent chance we're gonna die." And I was like, "Well, sign me up,
man."

Marcus
Luttrell became a SEAL at the age of 25 and says receiving the Special Warfare
insignia was the proudest accomplishment of his life.

Anderson
Cooper: Do you remember when you got the trident put on your chest?

Marcus
Luttrell: Absolutely. February 2nd, 2001.

Anderson
Cooper: You remember the date.

Marcus
Luttrell: Like it was my birthday.

Out
of 86 people who started out in his SEAL training class…only 20 graduated. It’s that sort of rigorous training that Vice
Admiral Maguire says prepares SEALs for the kind of firefight Marcus Luttrell
found himself facing in the mountains of northeastern Afghanistan.

Joe
Maguire: These are just you know unremarkable men who do absolutely remarkable
things. They’re warriors. It’s a warrior class. It’s a warrior spirit. And they
are extremely talented individuals and, you know, there’s this story that’s
come to light because Marcus survived and Marcus feels like he survived in
order to tell the story.

On
June 28, 2005, Petty Officer Marcus Luttrell, a sniper and team medic, wasn’t
sure he was going to survive. He was badly wounded and didn’t know anyone was
trying to rescue him.

Marcus
Luttrell: My back was broke, I had a frag laying everywhere. I just crawled
into this rock embankment, started taking dirt and putting it in all my wounds
so I wouldn't bleed to death.

Anderson
Cooper: So you had no medical gear?

Marcus
Luttrell: Uh-uh.

Anderson
Cooper: Did you have a map?

Marcus
Luttrell: It was all gone.

Anderson
Cooper: Did you have a compass?

Marcus
Luttrell: Gone.

Anderson
Cooper: Did you have--

Marcus
Luttrell: I didn't even have pants on.

Anderson
Cooper: You had no pants?

Marcus
Luttrell: No, that was completely ripped off me.

Luttrell
had been fighting for hours. His three SEAL brothers were all dead or near
death. Petty Officer Danny Dietz, from Littleton, Colo., had been in charge of
communications. Matt Axelson, Axe for short, was from Cupertino, Calif. Like Luttrell, he was a petty officer and a
sniper. Lieutenant Mike Murphy was the team leader. They were part of a larger
mission called Operation Red Wings.
Their job was to locate this man whom the four SEALs had only seen in
grainy photographs. He was an elusive militia leader aligned with the Taliban
named Ahmad Shah.

Anderson
Cooper: Who was Ahmad Shah?

Marcus
Luttrell: He had a group that he ran called the Mountain Tigers. He was
creating all kinds of havoc out there in that particular region that he was in,
killing Marines, Army, I mean, you name it.

Luttrell
was based at Bagram Air Base outside Kabul, and says his team had no idea
exactly how many fighters Ahmad Shah had with him.

Marcus
Luttrell: So I remember telling the guys, you know, "Grab some extra
rounds, we might need 'em."

It
was pitch black when Marcus Luttrell, Danny Dietz, Matt Axelson and the team
leader Mike Murphy were dropped by chopper a couple miles from where Ahmad Shah
was believed to be located. Luttrell says they hiked for hours through snowy,
steep and treacherous terrain. As daylight came the four SEALs lay down and
concealed themselves on the mountainside so they wouldn’t be detected. That’s
when everything went wrong. Suddenly they were surprised. Not by gunmen, but by
a goat herder.

Marcus
Luttrell: I was laying next to a tree, probably 60 feet long. And-- he had come
walking down it. And then when we jumped off of it, he jumped right off of it,
right over the top of my gun.

Anderson
Cooper: He didn’t see you at all?

Marcus
Luttrell: He had no idea I was there. And I had no idea he was above me.

Anderson
Cooper: Did he say anything?

Marcus
Luttrell: Nothing, not one word. Just a look, that's all-- that's all he would
do was just look at us. And I know that sounds funny, but there's a way some--
somebody's gonna look at you when you cut 'em off in traffic or something like
that and they're mad at you or whatnot. And then there's a way someone's gonna
look at you when they wanna kill you. And when it happens to you, you'll never
forget it.

Two
more herders showed up along with about 70 goats. The SEALs’ mission was
compromised.

Marcus
Luttrell: You hear the bells jingling and they just come up over every side of
it.

Anderson
Cooper: Goats?

Marcus
Luttrell: Goats, yeah.

Danny
Dietz tried to call back to base for instructions but couldn’t get through on
their radio. The team had to decide on their own what to do with the goat
herders.

Anderson
Cooper: Run through the options that you-- that you talked about.

Marcus
Luttrell: We talked about zip tying 'em, zip tying the goats, zip tying 'em and
taking 'em taking 'em with us or zip tying 'em and leaving 'em. Zip tying the
goats s-- or just executing the goats. We talked about zip tying and
eliminating the threat, the human threat.

Anderson
Cooper: You talked about killing them.

Marcus
Luttrell: Yes. And then the last one was turn 'em loose.

U.S.
military personnel are required to operate under formal Rules of Engagement
that specify when deadly force can be used. “A commander has the authority and
obligation to use all necessary means available – the rules say -- … to defend
(his) unit from a hostile act or demonstration of hostile intent.” But the goat herders who’d surprised the team
were unarmed.

Marcus
Luttrell: We knew that they hated us and that they weren’t on our side and if
they had the chance that they would like to see us dead. That’s the feeling we
were getting.

Anderson
Cooper: And you had every reason to believe if you let these guys go, they’re
gonna run down the mountain and tell…

Marcus
Luttrell: Right, but you can’t justify that feeling to our superiors in a court
of law.

The
SEAL’s knew that other U.S. military personnel had been court-martialed and
imprisoned for violating the rules of engagement

Anderson
Cooper: So you were concerned that if you killed them, you would be charged
with murder.

Marcus
Luttrell: Yes, absolutely.

Anderson
Cooper: That's something you talked about that.

Marcus
Luttrell: Absolutely.

Joe
Maguire: Killing them was really not an option because they were noncombatants
and they were unarmed…

Retired
Vice Admiral Joe Maguire says the only options the SEALs really had were to
take the goat herders captive and try to get evacuated by helicopter or let
them go.

Joe
Maguire: You don’t shoot innocent people, you don’t shoot unarmed people unless
of course they pose a threat.

Anderson
Cooper: Even if those goatherders are going to rundown to the village and
compromise your location?

Joe
Maguire: That’s correct. You know you don’t kill innocent people

Luttrell
told us the unit discussed what to do and were divided. In the past he’s been criticized for saying
they took a vote… something that’s not supposed to happen in SEAL teams because
it’s up to the team leader to make a decision.

Anderson
Cooper: A couple times you said looking back on it you wished you had made a
different decision, you wished you'd killed them. Do you still believe that?

Marcus
Lutrell: Sure, if it got my friends back. I mean, who knows what the outcome
would of been. You can't-- Yes. I wish I would have is the answer to your
question.

Luttrell
says it was only about an hour after they freed the goat herders that the first
enemy fighters appeared. They were on a ridge on this mountainside above where
the SEALs had dug in.

Marcus
Luttrell: We had to break out our shovels and use our boots and actually build
these little shelves to stand in. And when we were done we’d lean back against
the mountain like this. The first guy I saw had an RPG over each shoulder and
an AK-47 and then there was about 30 or 40 guys in line with him.

Anderson
Cooper: Had they seen you?

Marcus
Luttrell: Not yet. And my rifle was right here, I just cradled it, I rolled up
my head like this and I shot him in the head. The game was on right then.

According
to Luttrell, Ahmad Shah’s forces moved in to outflank the SEALs. We obtained this video, recorded by enemy
forces, from an American writer and photographer with military sources. The date stamp and other scenes that are too
gruesome to show you indicate it was recorded the day of the fighting.

This
is how the firefight is portrayed in a new film called "Lone Survivor"
which opens later this month. It’s based on a book Marcus Luttrell wrote. It’s
a Hollywood movie, not a documentary, but Luttrell and other former SEALs
consulted on the film and Luttrell says it captures the intensity of the
battle. The enemy fire was continuous. AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades. Luttrell says when the rounds started coming
in from both sides, it broke the SEALs’ position.

Marcus
Luttrell: And that shelf that I had made
crumbled and fell apart and just, it was like somebody opened up a trapdoor
underneath me. I just fell. And I started tumbling. And then I hit Mikey, and I
busted him right off of his little perch he was on. And we just both started
pinballing in those trees.

Anderson
Cooper: You're basically tumbling down the mountain.

Marcus
Luttrell: Yes, sir. Yeah, I landed on my back and broke my back, and Mikey
landed on his face and crushed his face.

Luttrell
says the four SEALs continued to fire on the advancing fighters, but repeatedly
fell or were forced to jump down the mountain.

Marcus
Luttrell: Every time you fell you broke something. I mean about an hour and a
half into this, Danny’s been shot three times that I know of. I was dragging
him, sit him up, he'd-- we'd fight for a little while, we'd got shot outta
there, I'd drag him somewhere else.

Anderson
Cooper: Even after Danny was shot multiple times and you’re dragging him he was
still firing?

Marcus
Luttrell: Yes sir, as best as he could. We got to an area where I was telling
him there was another way we could fall and when I put my arms underneath him,
I put 'em underneath his shoulders, and when I spun him around to take the
fall, I spun him into a bullet. And it hit him in the back of the head and killed
him.

Danny
Dietz was the first SEAL to die. Now it was just Luttrell, Matt Axelson, and
Mike Murphy left alive.

Marcus
Luttrell: I caught up with Mikey. And he asked me where Danny was and I was
like, "He’s dead." Well we tried to go get him. But once you fell a
certain distance, you couldn’t get back up the way you came, it was too steep. It
just wasn’t working.

Anderson
Cooper: What happened then?

Marcus
Luttrell: Axe walked out from behind the rock I was firing on. I almost shot
him. He sat down Indian style, against my left hip and leaned against my right
leg. He goes “I'm sorry, bro, I can't
help you because I'm blind." He goes, "They shot me in the
face."

Luttrell
says the SEALs were surrounded. They
hadn’t gotten through on the radio, so he says Lieutenant Mike Murphy, decided
to move to a completely exposed position so he could get a signal on his
satellite phone and call for back up.

Marcus
Luttrell: Mikey was out, had pushed out onto this boulder out in the middle of
the draw, it’s wide open, no cover, no nothing.
He was on our satellite phone.

Luttrell
saw his lieutenant make the call, a call Mike Murphy knew would likely cost him
his life.

Marcus
Luttrell: He took two rounds to the chest 'cause he spun like a top and it
dropped him. And I tried to wait-- I made my way up to him. And he's my best
friend. And I'd already lost Danny, and I knew that Axe was dyin', and I didn't
wanna lose him. And then he started to crawl left. And I was out in the open,
waving my hands. I was like, "Just come down to me." That's all I
wanted him to do, was just come down to me.
And-- I heard his gun go off. And a lotta gun fire in his area. I was
trying with everything I had to get to him, and he-- he started screaming my
name. He was like, "Marcus, man, you gotta help me. I need help,
Marcus." That it got so intense that I actually put my weapon down and
covered my ears, 'cause I couldn't stand to hear him die. All I wanted him to
do was stop screaming my name. And-- they killed him. And I-- and I put my
weapon down in a gunfight while my best friend was getting killed, so that
pretty much makes me a coward.

Anderson
Cooper: How can you say that?

Marcus
Luttrell: Say what?

Anderson
Cooper: Why do you-- why do you think that?

Marcus
Luttrell: Why do I think what?

Anderson
Cooper: That putting your weapon down makes you a coward?

Marcus
Luttrell: Because that is a cowardice act, if you put your weapon down in a
gunfight. You know, they-- they-- they say every man has his breaking point. I
never thought I'd find mine. The only way you break a Navy SEAL is you have to
kill us. But I broke right there. I quit right there.

Still,
Marcus Luttrell says he managed to pick up his weapon and found Matt Axelson,
the only other SEAL left alive.

Marcus
Luttrell: He was below me. And he crawled underneath this rock overhang and I
crawled in there, I was looking, I was like, “We’re gonna die, man. We’re going
to die right now.

Anderson
Cooper: You said that to Axe?

Marcus
Luttrell: Uh. And I you know, I made peace with God a long time ago about dying.
But most of the time we don’t know when we’re gonna die, they just shut our
light off. And it’s a weird feeling when you know the reaper’s at the door.

Matt
Axelson was badly wounded, but Luttrell, the team medic, said there was nothing
he could do.

Marcus
Luttrell: And a RPG hit behind him and blew him on top of me. I just remember
how loud it was and how white it went and when I pushed him off of me another
one hit and blew us out of there and blew him one way and blew me another. I
never saw him again for the rest of my life.

"I made peace with God a long time ago about dying.
But most of the time we don’t know when we’re gonna die, they just shut our
light off. And it’s a weird feeling when you know the reaper’s at the door."

Marcus
Luttrell says he isn’t sure how many hours they’d been fighting, but as darkness fell, he was all alone.

Anderson
Cooper: How'd you get through that night?

Marcus
Luttrell: It was rough. That was the longest night of my life 'cause the sun
had gone down. It was dark. It was pitch black. I was-- I-- you know, I'd fall.
I'd knock myself out. I'd come to, I’d keep crawling. That’s just what I kept
doing.

The
next day, he was desperate. Still pursued by enemy fighters, he had been shot
twice in his legs. He had three cracked
vertebrae, and was bleeding profusely, but he says his biggest concern was
finding water to drink.

Anderson
Cooper: People wouldn't consider thirst as being a big deal. But it-- it-- it
becomes all you can think about after awhile.

Marcus
Luttrell: That’s it. It was the only thing I could concentrate on. It was the
only thing I could think about. And not even my wounds. Any-- all the wounds I
had sustained, my back, my broken b-- all the-- nothing. All I cared about was
the thirst. That was it. I was willing to kill anybody or anything or do
whatever I had to do to get water.

He
says when he finally found water, he didn’t get to drink for long. He was suddenly surrounded by a small group
of Afghan men.

Marcus
Luttrell: And I found a waterfall. And I managed to get to the top of it. I
took my gloves off, washed my face. I leaned into the water fountain and got
two sips out of it before some guy was screaming at me again. And two guys with
guns were maneuvering around on me. I have my gun at my hip, tension outta my
trigger, my safety was off.

Anderson
Cooper: You had a grenade too.

Marcus Luttrell: Uh-huh, when he was walking towards me, I pulled it and I
pulled the pin out and I said, you know, if you try anything, I’ll kill all of
us. I don’t care. I’ve had enough.

It
was the second time in the mission Marcus Luttrell had to decide: were the men
in front of him civilians or enemy fighters?

Luttrell
also didn’t know that an American rescue operation had already been mounted and
had gone terribly wrong.

Some
36 hours after his four-man Navy SEAL team was dropped into enemy territory in
the mountains of northeastern Afghanistan, Marcus Luttrell says he was all
alone. He didn't know that Special Operations Forces had attempted a
rescue operation, but that mission had ended in tragedy, when one of the
choppers was blown up with 16 people on board. Luttrell was badly wounded. He
had been shot twice, several vertebrae were cracked, and he had shrapnel wounds
in his legs. At least two of his SEAL teammates were dead, the third had been
shot multiple times and was missing. Desperately thirsty, pursued by enemy
fighters, Marcus Luttrell says he had just found some water to drink when he
was surprised by several Afghan men, who he at first thought were members of
the Taliban.

Marcus
Luttrell: When I got to that waterfall and got those two sips out of there I
looked around I was actually thinking this is a pretty good place to lay down
and die.

Anderson
Cooper: You were ready to die?

Marcus
Luttrell: I wasn’t ready to die. I just knew I was dying.

That’s
when an Afghan man appeared. Luttrell later learned his name was Mohammad
Gulab.

Marcus
Luttrell: He came up over this rock ledge and started screaming at me “American,
American” and I swung around on him, I mean I had my finger on the trigger,
tension out, safety off, and he started walking at me, and he was like “OK, OK”
and he lifted up his shirt to show me he didn’t have a weapon. He was like "OK,OK." I lowered my
weapon and I pulled a grenade and pulled the pin and I was saying,” I’ll kill
all of us.”

Anderson
Cooper: You were prepared to blow yourself up along with everybody else?

Marcus
Luttrell: Yes. I wasn’t going to get taken.

Anderson
Cooper: Why do you think you didn’t kill him?

Marcus
Luttrell: I can’t tell ya. I don’t know why.

Luckily
for Luttrell, Mohammad Gulab who lived in a nearby village was not a member of
the Taliban.

Marcus
Luttrell: He gave me water, and then he rolled me over and he had seen where I
had been shot, and I was bleeding real bad. Three other guys plus him picked me
up and started carrying me down to their village.

SEAL
commanders didn’t know what had happened to Marcus Luttrell and his three
teammates. Petty Officer Danny Dietz was dead. Petty Officer Matt Axelson had
been gravely wounded and was separated from Luttrell. Lieutenant Mike Murphy
had been killed after making a satellite phone call for help. Retired Vice
Admiral Joe Maguire told us how much he admires Murphy for making that call.

Joe
Maguire: They are in a life and death situation. He’s been shot Matt’s been shot Danny’s been
shot. He finished the call. And at the end he said we could really use your
help. We said help is on the way. Mike finished the call with, "Thank
you."

Anderson
Cooper: Even though, I mean…

Joe
Maguire: "Thank you," yeah, he went out there and he gave above and
beyond to do that.

Anderson
Cooper: And he knew, going out on that rock, what that meant –

Joe
Maguire: He probably wouldn’t have come back.

As
a result of the call, two Chinook helicopters like these with Special
Operations Forces on board raced to the mountainside where the four SEALs had
been fighting. The Chinooks went in without the Apache gunships that usually
provide cover.

Joe
Maguire: It was the pilots and the task unit commander that made a conscious
decision that "OK, we're going to press and we’re going to get there
because we have to make a difference." To me when people ask what would
you say would be-- would sum up you know the greatest mistake in military
operations, to me it’s just a simple two words, too late.

As
portrayed in the new movie "Lone Survivor," one of the Chinooks was
hovering to offload Special Forces. That’s when a rocket-propelled grenade was
fired into it. All Special Operations Forces on board - eight SEALs and eight
Army Night Stalkers were killed.

Joe
Maguire: It hit hard, and you know we lost all souls on board.

Marcus
Luttrell likely wouldn’t have made it if it weren’t for Mohammad Gulab. He
ended up in his village for four days, being moved between different houses and
even a cave to prevent him from being captured. He was finally rescued by U.S.
forces who had been scouring the mountains.

Anderson
Cooper: They’d been looking for you?

Marcus
Luttrell: Right, for as long as I’d been missing, so they were beat to hell.

Anderson
Cooper: What was that feeling when you
saw the first American in the village?

Marcus
Luttrell: I was out of it pretty hard. My head was down and they were carrying
me, I remember lifting my head cause they were screaming my name…he was like
“Marcus is that you?” and I was like, “Yeah, right here bro.”

Marcus
Luttrell, the lone survivor, was finally going home, but returning to regular
life in America hasn’t been easy.

Anderson
Cooper: You’ve spent time with Marcus, what was it like for him coming home?

Pete
Berg: Rough, very rough.

Pete
Berg, who directed the movie "Lone Survivor," first met Luttrell
after he’d read his book. Berg was shocked by Luttrell’s condition when he went
to visit him in his house in Texas.

Peter
Berg: I went in there and it was almost like living in a shrine. It was nothing
but pictures of his dead brothers and flags and helmets and mementos and pieces
of uniform from his dead brothers. And on the-- in the middle of the living
room floor was-- basically a tombstone with the names of the-- all of his
brothers that have died in that operation. And Marcus would-- would sit in that
house-- in that-- in that moment, in that experience, in that gunfight. He was
almost living inside of it when I first met him.

Marcus
Luttrell has suffered both emotionally and physically, but his family and
friends say he is getting better. He has a service dog, Mr. Rigby, who never
leaves his side. He’s also gotten married. He and his wife Melanie have two
children.

Luttrell
has also had time to piece together what happened to him when he was badly
wounded on the mountain in Afghanistan, including details of Gulab’s role in
saving his life.

Now,
eight years later, the two men have become close friends and Gulab
occasionally flies from Afghanistan to Luttrell's family’s ranch in
Texas to visit.

Gulab
and Marcus: I love you. He says, "I love you too, that’s why I came for
you" he says, "my brother.”

We
wanted to know why Gulab was willing to risk his life to help a complete
stranger. He told us it was because of a
tribal code of honor called Pashtunwali.

Anderson
Cooper: Explain Pashtunwali.

Mohammad
Gulab: Pashtunwali is a respect, a respect for a guest that comes knocking at
your door. And even if he is in need, or if he is imminent danger, we must
protect him. I knew I had to help him, to do the right thing, because he was in
a lot of danger.

Anderson
Cooper: You knew that they would come for him.

Mohammad
Gulab: They did. The Taliban came and sat down with me. I said, "No, I
will not hand him over to you."

"Pashtunwali is a respect, a respect for a guest that comes knocking at
your door. And even if he is in need, or if he is imminent danger, we must
protect him."

Anderson
Cooper: What did they threaten?

Mohammad
Gulab: They told me that, "You will die. Your brother will die. Your
cousins will die. Your whole family will die. It is not worth it. Give us the
American." And I said, "No, I will protect him 'til the end."

Gulab
has suffered for protecting Luttrell. He says his house was burned down and a
cousin killed. In Afghanistan he’s had to go into hiding with his wife and 10
children. Luttrell is hoping to get him a green card, so he can settle at least
part time in the United States.

Marcus
Luttrell: We’re family.

Anderson
Cooper: You consider him family.

Marcus
Luttrell: Absolutely. I mean, we're br-- we're brothers in blood. We sh--bled
together. He very well could of just left me laying there on the side of the
waterfall and let me die but he didn’t.

For
his bravery Marcus Luttrell was awarded the Navy Cross in a White House
ceremony. Matt Axelson and Danny Dietz were also awarded the Navy Cross
posthumously. For sacrificing his life to make that telephone call, Lieutenant
Mike Murphy was given the Medal of Honor. His parents accepted it. It was the
first time the country’s highest military honor was awarded for service in
Afghanistan.

Ahmad
Shah, the man Murphy’s team was looking for, was killed in a separate operation
in 2008. After retiring, Vice Admiral Joe Maguire runs the Special Operations
Warrior Foundation, which provides support for veterans and their
families. Marcus Luttrell created and
raises money for a similar group, the Lone Survivor Foundation. Luttrell has also visited families of his fallen
SEAL brothers.

Anderson
Cooper: You traveled around the country to do that.

Marcus
Luttrell: Yes, sir.

Anderson
Cooper: What was that like?

Marcus
Luttrell: That sucked. Think about it
like this. If you had a son that was out on that mountain with me, if one guy
had to live who would you be praying for to--, your son or for-- would you be praying
for me? And every time they look at me, I am the one who made it out and
delivered the news on how hard their son fought but I am also the one who lived
and their son died. Why? Why did you
live and why did my son die? I don’t have the answer for that.

Anderson Cooper, anchor of CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360," has contributed to 60 Minutes since 2006. His exceptional reporting on big news events has earned Cooper a reputation as one of television's pre-eminent newsmen.